"Dear mother, I would do anything to make you happy—you know I would; but I don't think my presence here adds to your comfort. I know you are in a continual fright; and I don't wonder at it. Sir Aymer is really intolerable sometimes. I quite long to fling something at his head as he sits there, thinking of something unpleasant to say. If I were older, I suppose he would not be so bad; but that half-hour after dinner, when you are not there, is more than I can bear!"
"It is all bad enough," Lady Anne said, with a sigh. She had borne it patiently, for Villiers' sake, for many a year; and now he could not bear it, for her sake, for a few months!
"It is indeed! I don't know how you bear it; but positively, mamma, I can't! Last night, as soon as we were alone, he began to cross-examine me as to where I had been, and what I had been doing all day. I told him that I had been riding, and met Mr. Lowther and his daughters, who asked me to go home with them to lunch and play croquet, which I very gladly did; and, said I, 'Miss Gertrude Lowther is a very pretty girl.'
"Well, upon that, he burst forth in his best big bow-wow style—the Lowthers are not fit companions for me—Mr. Lowther is only an iron-master—the girls designing flirts, every one of them; and finally, he was sorry to see that I had a taste for low company. I assured him that the Miss Lowthers are very nice girls, highly educated; upon which he remarked that patches of gilding only draw attention to the coarse grain of the wood! Did you ever hear such nonsense? Finally he said I must never go to Heather Hill again, and must cut the girls at once; which I simply refused to do."
"Did he say anything more?"
"Oh yes! A heap of nonsense about liking low company and marrying beneath me! As if at eighteen I was thinking of marrying any one."
"Oh dear! I wish he had not got that idea into his head. Yet you must be patient, Villiers, with your grandfather. He has had one terrible disappointment; and you see, unfortunately, you remind him of it constantly."
"I'm almost inclined to be glad of that," said Villiers, with a gay laugh. "It's only fair that I should aggravate him, when he aggravates me so much. But how do I manage it, mamma? Tell me, that I may enjoy the fun."
"The fun! You wicked boy, it is no fun!" said Lady Anne, glancing round as if half afraid to speak, lest some one should overbear her. "Shut that door, my dear."
Then, as she walked down the terrace with her boy at her side, she said in a low voice, "Did you ever hear of your uncle Guy?"